Pong

We have had an abundance of greenery appearing all along the river bank. It stretches all the way down to the water and onto the area that when flooded was about half way into the depths. We knew that the thin leaves were the beginnings of bluebells, which as you drive around this neck of the woods in spring you can see turning the floor into a carpet of blue, but the other stuff seemed to be ever thicker and we have had no idea what it is.

Now we know...it is wild garlic and it looks rather like a big field of wild garlic! Randa and Mum came today for lunch and after traipsing down to the woods we picked a couple of leaves - broke them two and wow what a smell!

Mum made me feel great by saying that pretty soon the river bank will smell like 'stew', not too sure how I felt about this. It doesn't conjure up the best of pictures does it?

...Friends over, ' hey, let's walk down to the river's edge and dangle our feet in the cooling water - just sorry about the smell of beef stew'...

Anyway, having now done some looking up on the interweb (think you call that research), it is really rather great having wild garlic. It seems that you don't bother with the rather small and insigificant bulbs and instead it is all about the leaves. You pick one leaf per plant so they keep coming back and use them in cooking. They have very pretty white flowers as well, so I now have dreams of a bed of white garlic flowers and stunning bluebells all along my river bank.

This morning I took advantage of Jeffers taking the boys for a swim and alone in the garden I practiced ultra-gardening. This consists of hacking back and maiming anything that I don't know what it is...

It was a jungle out there - me against the brambles. I wasn't really equipped for the job with yellow rubber gloves a pair of blunt garden scissory type things, oh and a rake. Just perfect for chopping my way through the egde of the back garden. One hour later, my back out of joint and a blister on my hand, and no you could not really see the difference, but I knew I had been there.

My sister came today and was placed on Jack the tractor. She started in the lowest gear for all of a minute and before I knew it she was hurtling around the garden, laughing in a slightly uncontrolled manner. She finally brought him to a stop, with a mad look in her eye and sheer enjoyment written all over her face. We both agreed it would have been Dad racing around the garden, turning tighter and tighter circles and at more and more of a pace, probably until he tipped the tractor over. Shame he is not here to have a go, funny though to think about what a devil he would have been...

I tried to demonstrate my skills at picking up things with the tractor. Obviously as the eldest sister it falls on me to try to out do my sisters at all times, but all I achieved was scrapping bigger and bigger wads of earth onto the bucket. I clambered off as soon as I knew it wasn't going my way - Randa remained suitably fun forgiving me my total ineptitude. I only realised today for all my tractor driving - I didn't know how to turn him off!

Do now!